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This article reports on the brain drain taking place in 2006 as thousands of citizens of Eastern European countries leave home for jobs in Western Europe. Many well-qualified immigrants, including doctors, teachers and computer experts, have moved to the West, primarily to Ireland and Great Britain, their arrival bolstering the financial well-being of those countries, while their absence damages their home economies.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In France this summer, that means being downright friendly to tourists -- something that does not come naturally to every café waiter and concierge in Paris. The French Tourist Office is offering tourism professionals lessons on how to smile brighter and provide better service. Americans are the big spenders of global tourism, a $3.5 trillion industry that represents 10 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) and employs more than 200 million people. With hotel rooms from Hong Kong to Singapore vacant and hundreds of flights grounded, economists are cutting GDP forecasts by a percentage point or more -- not just for China, but for much of the Far East. The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) was predicting a paltry one percent growth in global tourism for 2003 -- a dismal showing for an industry that has averaged four percent or more annually over the past 20 years. Now more and more mainstream airlines are advertising fares on their own Web sites, as well as on aviation-industry sites like www.opodo.com and Orbitz.com. Better software is allowing consumers to individualize their trips -- from air travel and hotel bookings to theater tickets and dinner reservations -- with a click of the mouse. While tourism has historically been driven by customers from the West, the next two decades will be shaped by the democratization of travel, as Russians, East Europeans, Southeast Asians and, most importantly, the Chinese gain the means and the desire to go abroad.

Focuses on young Eastern Europeans and their willingness to embrace globalization. Their opinion of Western Europeans who will protest globalization at the 2000 IMF/World Bank meeting in Prague; The rebuilding of battered economies; Applicants for membership in the European Union; Idealism of the young people which is directed mainly toward the task of building capitalism.

Examines how fundamentally divergent views on Russia are dividing the New Europe from the Old. Russia's gains in economic prosperity; Attitudes of European countries regarding Russia; Eastern Europeans' perceptions of Russian President Vladimir Putin; Eastern Europe's long history with Russia; Why turmoil in Belarus and Georgia worries Easterners; Views of political analysts; Russia's increasingly authoritarian stance; Observation that the European Union has no strategy on how to stabilize Russia or its neighbors to the East; Outlook for divisions within the new, expanded European Union.

Reports on the unemployment rate in German which has reached 12.6% deepening a palpable national angst. New study which shows that 77% of Germans worry about losing their jobs; Worries about unemployment which have caused a three-year fall in consumer spending which has in turn stopped growth and killed jobs; Labor Unions which are playing on the fears of cheap labor from Eastern European countries; How the job scare threatens the European Union's next step toward integration; German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who has joined France and Belgium in putting the brakes on the planned opening of Europe's market for services; Why this is important; Those who feel Germany is acting in a way that will cost even more jobs over the long-term due to its insecurity and shortsightedness.

This article reports on the benefits of immigration in Great Britain. According to the firm of Ernst and Young, 300,000 Eastern European immigrants to the U.K. have helped ease a labor shortage and in doing so are responsible for a reduction in wage inflation and interest rates. In addition, immigrants have helped make the U.K. more competitive against European rivals.

Discusses the importance of European-American unity to Cental and Eastern Europeans. Claim that, for Eastern Europeans, the day to commemorate is not D-Day, but Yalta; Claim that, as new members of the European Union, Eastern Europeans have a neophyte's enthusiasm for NATO and transatlantic unity; Discussion of how nationalists in Europe and in the United States view each other; Call upon the two sides to seek a renewal of their vows, not a divorce; Reasons why Europe and America need each other.

The European Union will get more than a slew of new member states on May 1. It will also get the makings of an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Of the more than 300,000 new cases of multidrug-resistant TB each year, four in five involve "superstrains" resistant to three or four main TB drugs, according to a report released last week by the World Health Organization. Last week the Royal Dutch Tuberculosis Foundation announced that six Dutch nationals had been infected with multidrug-resistant TB, the first such cases in the Netherlands. Using DNA testing, health officials traced the disease to an Eastern European woman living in the country. If preventive measures aren't put in place, health authorities fear the disease could overwhelm European health systems.

Discusses labor controls and immigration in the European Union. EU's promise to open doors to immigrants in 2000; How it is now slamming some of those doors shut with Germany and Austria's consideration of seven-year total employment bans on migrants from 10 central and eastern European countries that will join the EU in May; Labor controls in even the liberal countries of the Netherlands and Sweden; Fears of an immigration invasion.

Reports that a flowering of Jewish life may be Germany's opportunity to atone for the horrors of its Nazi past. Growth of Germany's Jewish community; East European Jews who have flocked to Germany since of the collapse of the Soviet Union; Strain on Germany's Jewish institutions.